Marketing Science
Estimating Heterogeneous EBA and Economic Screening Rule Choice Models
Marketing Science
On Customized Goods, Standard Goods, and Competition
Marketing Science
Product Line Design and Production Technology
Marketing Science
EditorialAre Consumers Rational? Experimental Evidence?
Marketing Science
Editorial: Save ResearchAbandon the Case Method of Teaching
Marketing Science
Estimating Heterogeneous EBA and Economic Screening Rule Choice Models
Marketing Science
On Customized Goods, Standard Goods, and Competition
Marketing Science
Strategic Assortment Reduction by a Dominant Retailer
Marketing Science
Product Variety and Endogenous Pricing with Evaluation Costs
Management Science
When More Alternatives Lead to Less Choice
Marketing Science
Noncompensatory Dyadic Choices
Marketing Science
Journal of Management Information Systems
Electronic Commerce Research and Applications
Retailers' Use of Shipping Cost Strategies: Free Shipping or Partitioned Prices?
International Journal of Electronic Commerce
Manufacturing & Service Operations Management
Comparing or configuring products: are we getting the right ones?
Proceedings of the Eighth International Workshop on Variability Modelling of Software-Intensive Systems
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Almost universally, research and practice suggest that a brand that increases its product assortment, or variety, should benefit through increased market share. In this paper, we show this is not always the case. We introduce the construct "assortment type" and demonstrate that the effect of assortment size on brand share is systematically moderated by assortment type. We define an "alignable" assortment as a set of brand variants that differ along a single, compensatory dimension such that choosing from that assortment only requires within-attribute trade-offs. In contrast, we define a "nonalignable" assortment as a set of brand variants that simultaneously vary along multiple, noncompensatory dimensions, demanding between-attribute trade-offs. In turn, we argue that an alignable assortment can efficiently meet the diverse tastes of consumers, thereby increasing brand share, but that a nonalignable assortment increases both the cognitive effort and the potential for regret faced by a consumer, thereby decreasing brand share. We term this effect "overchoice." Across three studies, we provide evidence of overchoice and tie the effect to the effort and regret brought about by nonalignability. In the process, we demonstrate that simplification of information presentation, reversibility of choice, and a reduction in underlying nonalignability serve to reduce or eliminate this effect.